EMANUEL ACCEPTS TOP SLOT IN OBAMA WH  —  From NBC's Andrea Mitchell  —  A senior Obama advisor confirms to NBC News that Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel has accepted the job of Chief of Staff for the Obama White House.  —  *** UPDATE *** In an email to NBC News, Emanuel spokeswoman Sarah Feinberg denies …

Gay-rights advocates to challenge Proposition 8 in court  —  Supporters of the measure, which passed Tuesday by a margin of about 52%, are outraged and say the voters have spoken.  —  After losing at the polls, gay-rights advocates filed a legal challenge today in California Supreme Court to Proposition 8 …

Hackers and Spending Sprees … The computer systems of both the Obama and McCain campaigns were victims of a sophisticated cyberattack by an unknown “foreign entity,” prompting a federal investigation, NEWSWEEK reports today.  —  At the Obama headquarters in midsummer …

Obama considers stars for Cabinet  —  President-elect Barack Obama is strongly considering Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Environmental Protection Agency, a Cabinet post, Democratic officials told Politico.  —  Obama's transition planners are weighing several other celebrity-level political stars …

Notes from the collapse  —  This morning, after having absorbed the substantial victory of Barack Obama, I noticed a couple of interesting items in the data.  Barack Obama certainly won this race, but he won it with just a little more votes than George Bush won in his re-election bid, and the turnout models came up short.

McCain's verdict on Palin: more trouble than a pitbull  —  The British ambassador reveals what the defeated presidential candidate really thinks of his running mate  —  So now we know what John McCain really thinks of his running mate Sarah Palin - and that's not just because of the awkward …

Coleman vs. Franken: Recount looms  —  Minnesotans likely will have to wait for a winner in the U.S. Senate contest between Norm Coleman and Al Franken.  —  One of the most bitter U.S. Senate races in Minnesota history continued to grind on early this morning, with Republican Sen. Norm Coleman …

2008 turnout shatters all records  —  More than 130 million people turned out to vote Tuesday, the most ever to vote in a presidential election.  —  With ballots still being counted in some precincts into Wednesday morning, an estimated 64 percent of the electorate turned out, making 2008 the highest percentage turnout in generations.

Election 2008: what really happened  —  After a quick look at the election results and exit polls (from www.cnn.com), some thoughts:  —  1. The election was pretty close.  Obama won by about 5% of the vote, consistent with the latest polls and consistent with his forecast vote based on forecasts based on the economy.

Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job  —  WASHINGTON—African-American man Barack Obama, 47, was given the least-desirable job in the entire country Tuesday when he was elected president of the United States of America.  In his new high-stress, low-reward position, Obama will be charged …

Reid, Lieberman to meet  —  (CNN) — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will likely meet later this week with Joe Lieberman to discuss whether the Democrat-turned-Independent will be stripped of his Senate committee chairmanship, a senior Democratic leadership aide tells CNN.

Fight  —  Now back to the real world.  It's traditional that a new president get a honeymoon of some indefinite length.  It's also traditional for Republicans (and many conservatives) to act as Charlie Brown to Lucy with the football.  —  Obama will get the most lavish and extended honeymoon in history.

A Way Out of the Wilderness  —  Well, we Republicans have just made history.  Not the type of history we wanted to make, mind you, but history nonetheless.  Not only did we lose the White House but, after losing our House and Senate majorities in 2006, we followed it up last night with even steeper losses in Congress.

The Treatment of Bush Has Been a Disgrace  —  What must our enemies be thinking?  —  Earlier this year, 12,000 people in San Francisco signed a petition in support of a proposition on a local ballot to rename an Oceanside sewage plant after George W. Bush.

No decision, no majority in Senate race  —  Chambliss, Martin waiting for final votes to be counted to see if runoff needed  —  Georgia's U.S. Senate race remained in doubt Wednesday morning as neither major party candidate had more than 50 percent of the vote.

How He Did It  —  A team of NEWSWEEK reporters reveals the secret battles and private fears behind an epic election.  —  Barack Obama had a gift, and he knew it.  He had a way of making very smart, very accomplished people feel virtuous just by wanting to help Barack Obama.

Palin faces questions, different landscape when she returns to Alaska  —  ANCHORAGE - Can Sarah Palin go home again?  —  In the 68 days since Alaska's governor began her run for vice president, things have changed on the home front.  Some of her former allies are fuming, and former enemies are lying in wait.

The Next President  —  This is one of those moments in history when it is worth pausing to reflect on the basic facts:  —  An American with the name Barack Hussein Obama, the son of a white woman and a black man he barely knew, raised by his grandparents far outside the stream of American power and wealth …

FIRST THOUGHTS: THE 44TH PRESIDENT  —  From Chuck Todd, Mark Murray, Domenico Montanaro, and Carrie Dann  —  *** The 44th President: In a just a little more than four years, an Illinois state senator who delivered a rousing speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention will now become …